Abstract. It has been demonstrated that erlotinib is effective in treating patients with brain metastasis from non-small-cell lung cancer. However, the number of studies determining the erlotinib concentration in these patients is limited. The purpose of this study was to measure the concentration of erlotinib in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with brain metastasis from non-small-cell lung carcinoma. Six patients were treated with the standard recommended daily dose of erlotinib (150 mg) for 4 weeks. All the patients had previously received chemotherapy, but no brain radiotherapy. At the end of the treatment period, blood plasma and cerebrospinal fluid samples were collected and the erlotinib concentration was determined by high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS̸MS). The average erlotinib concentration in the blood plasma and the cerebrospinal fluid was 717.7±459.7 and 23.7±13.4 ng/ml, respectively. The blood-brain barrier permeation rate of erlotinib was found to be 4.4±3.2%. In patients with partial response (PR), stable disease (SD) and progressive disease (PD), the average concentrations of erlotinib in the cerebrospinal fluid were 35.5±19.0, 19.1±8.7 and 16.4±5.9 ng/ml, respectively. In addition, the efficacy rate of erlotinib for metastatic brain lesions was 33.3%, increasing to 50% in patients with EGFR mutations. However, erlotinib appeared to be ineffective in cases with wild-type EGFR. In conclusion, a relatively high concentration of erlotinib was detected in the cerebrospinal fluid of patients with brain metastases from non-small-cell lung cancer. Thus, erlotinib may be considered as a treatment option for this patient population.
BackgroundThis study aimed to evaluate the antitumor activity of camrelizumab, an antiprogrammed cell death-1 antibody, in pretreated recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and to explore predictive biomarkers.MethodsPatients with recurrent (not amenable to locally curative treatment) or metastatic NPC who had failed at least two lines of chemotherapy were eligible to receive camrelizumab (200 mg intravenously every 2 weeks) for 2 years or until disease progression, intolerable adverse events, withdrawal of consents, or investigator decision. The primary endpoint was objective response rate (ORR) assessed by an independent review committee (IRC). Programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression was assessed by immunohistochemistry. Other immune-related biomarkers including major histocompatibility complex class I and major histocompatibility complex class II (MHC-II) were assessed by multiplex immunofluorescence staining.ResultsBetween August 14, 2018, and December 30, 2019, a total of 156 patients were enrolled. The IRC-assessed ORR was 28.2% (95% CI 21.3% to 36.0%). The median progression-free survival was 3.7 months (95% CI 2.0 to 4.1) per IRC, and the median overall survival was 17.4 months (95% CI 15.2 to 21.9). The ORRs were 35.2% (95% CI 25.3% to 46.1%) vs 19.4% (95% CI 10.4% to 31.4%) in patients with tumor PD-L1 expression of ≥10% and<10%, respectively. Patients with durable clinical benefit (DCB), which was defined as complete response, partial response or stable disease of ≥18 weeks, had higher density of MHC-II+ cell in stroma than patients without DCB (median 868.1 (IQR 413.4–2854.0) cells/mm2 vs median 552.4 (IQR 258.4 to 1242.1) cells/mm2). MHC-II+ cell density did not correlate with PD-L1 expression, and a composite of high stromal MHC-II+ cell density and tumor PD-L1 expression further enriched patients who could benefit from camrelizumab.ConclusionsCamrelizumab had clinically meaningful antitumor activity in patients with recurrent or metastatic NPC. The composition of both MHC-II+ cell density and PD-L1 expression could result in better patient selection.
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